Marc Menchaca is going undercover…
The 46-year-old half-Mexican American actor has joined the cast of Apple TV+’s six-episode limited series The Big Cigar, which is centered on Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton.
Menchaca, who most recently starred on Netflix’s Ozark, will star alongside André Holland, Don Cheadle, Alessandro Nivola and Tiffany Boone in the project.
Based on the eponymous Playboy magazine article by Joshuah Bearman, the series tells the extraordinary, hilarious, almost-too-good-to-be-true story of how Newton relied on his best friend, Bert Schneider (Nivola), the Hollywood producer behind Easy Rider, to elude a nationwide manhunt and escape to Cuba while being pursued into exile by the FBI.
Menchaca will portray Agent Sydney Clark. A former lawyer and Vietnam vet from Oklahoma, Clark lives undercover as a dirty hippie while pursuing Newton, who is wanted on charges of killing a teenage prostitute.
NAACP Image Award winner Janine Sherman Barrois is serving as The Big Cigar‘s showrunner. Jim Hecht wrote the show’s first episode, with Cheadle directing and executive producing the first two.
The show hails from Warner Bros. Television, where Barrois and her Folding Chair Productions are under an overall deal. Barrois and Hecht are executive producing alongside Bearman, Joshua Davis and Arthur Spector through their production company Epic, a division of Vox Media Studios.
Menchaca is best known for his scene-stealing turns as Jack Hoskins on HBO’s hit series The Outsider, and as Russ Langmore on the Emmy-winning Netflix drama series Ozark.
He will next be seen in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, HBO’s miniseries The White House Plumbers, John Hyams’ thriller Sick and Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi pic True Love for New Regency.
His additional television credits include Black Mirror, Homeland, MacGyver, Blue Bloods, Chicago P.D., Sleepy Hollow, The Blacklist, Law & Order: SVU, CSI and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.